Thursday, August 2, 2012

Mopping up the stable

In Mists of Pandaria hunters will have 44 different pet families to play with! All of them able to fill the role we need them to; cunning, ferocity or tenacity. But there are limitations... We can only keep 25 pets each; 20 in the stable and 5 with us. With cool new looks, buffs, families and abilities coming, it's time to clean up the stable.

Luckily for me, I'm mostly hung up on cats and spirit beasts, and not that crazy about the 42 other pet families. If I was to fill Lae's Ark with animals, I would probably only bring cats. :) But even I will have to make some choices now.

My current stable

I have all the nine current spirit beasts; Ankha, Arcturis, Ban'thalos, Ghostcrawler, Gondria, Karoma, Loque'nahak, Magria and Skoll.

I have a core hound for Ancient Hysteria, a wolf for Furious Howl, a fox, two Molten Front spiders (Kirix and Deth'tilac) for looks and PVP, a wind serpent for spell damage debuff, a monkey for PVP, a raptor, a ravager for "four percent physical damage" and Terrorpene for looks. We're up to 19 now.

The remaining six slots are for my cats;

Ratchet

Ratchet, my first pet

Doser

Doser, my first ever rare camp

Sofus

Sofus

Ratchet, Doser and Sofus are very dear to me, as they're named after the rulers of my real life:

Ratchet (6 years old now) and Sofus (2 years old now)

Sofus (2 years old) and Doser (4 years old)

Aslan

Aslan

Leo

Leo

Skarr

Skarr

My stable in Mists of Pandaria

My stable in Mists of Pandaria will be divided into three categories;

The sentimental stable (14 slots): Five of the Spirit Beasts, all six cats, Terrorpene, Kirix and Deth'tilac.

The sensible buff stable (estimated 8 slots): When the buff design is set in stone, I will have to look at my raid team and map out which buffs we're likely to struggle with bringing. Optimally I would have two pets for each buff, one exotic and one not. But I won't have room for that, so one of each will have to suffice.

The "crazy gatherer stable" (3 slots): The remaining Spirit Beasts and other rares, unique looks or just cool looks.

Conclusion

This isn't adding up at all. I don't feel like releasing the four Spirit Beasts that I don't feel as attached to, they're part of my collection! But if I keep them, someone else will have to go. With new taming challenges and new skins, I know I want at the very least a new white tiger, a black tiger and a blue porcupine. I have seen people on more pet-centric blogs name different skins the same name, and in that way they keep the "pet," although they update the look. I'll have to give it a try I think. This makes me feel a bit silly though. I have killed thousands upon thousands of humanoids, beasts and anything with or without a pulse in this game, why do I get this tear-dripping image in my head as soon as it comes to "Abandon Pet"? On the same note, everyone should check out Aspect of the Dork's "What hunter spec are you?" cosmo quiz. I became Beast Master, the lover of happyful and prettyful pets of course. :)

6 comments:

I was just writing up my musing on this very issue. Some hard choices are coming. I also have all 9 SB, 4 of which must stay and 6 other non-negotiable keepers, so I may have a little more wiggle room than you have, but I'm feeling pinched. Another tab or two would be so great.

Currently, I have a Wolf, Cat, Wind Serpent, Raptor, Ravager, and Hyena for PvE (the Hyena isn't really used a lot because the main bleed specs, Feral, Subtlety, and Arms can already provide it so it's really only useful to Assassination and Combat rogues and Marksmanship hunters. For PvP, I have a Monkey, Spider, Nether Ray, and Bird of Prey. I use the Monkey in arenas, battlegrounds, and duels, and the rest I use in duels only. I also have a Bat for PvP that I thought I was going to use in battlegrounds but then I found out the Monkey was better. I also have my first 3 pets, a Wolf, a Bear, and a Spider. In the next expansion, I'm planning on taming the exotic pets if BM is the best DPS specs and also a Basilisk for their PvP ability.

When you play MM and the other buffs/debuffs are accounted for, ask yourself "Will the person bringing the bleed debuff be attacking your target." Sometimes the bear tank isn't on add duty, for example.

I have the same problem at the moment - I have never really been a collector, yet now I find myself having tamed spirit beasts.. sigh..Pretty much I am going to try to keep several of my long standing pets, a couple of utility (monkey, terrorpene), spirit beasts and lose the rest.My stable will be made up of 1 of each buff/debuff pet, so that I may bring whatever is needed.But REALLY... so many new pets and skins and they arent increasing our stable to 50? or even 40?... sham on blizz :PLet us start rallying together to increase stable size before release!

To be honest, I haven't even started planning for it. It will take some time to get used to the new buff arrangements. I had a hard time accepting that I had Trueshot Aura as a Survival hunter on the PTR. I do however have most of the saber cat models in my stable that are unused, so those will probably be the first to go if I have to choose.

I've got 1 slot open right now... some things are definitely going to get released into the wild...

I've got to at least make room for a quilen and a water strider.

I've got 2 silithids (1 can go). I can get rid of Terrorpene and keep my other turtle. I can get rid of my sporebat. That's 3.I might be able to get rid of Sambas and Skarr if I had to (I never use them anyway). The chimaera and worm could maybe go as well since I never liked/used their channeled AoE abilities.